Lamia

Lamia was a figure in ancient Greek mythology, a daughter of the god Poseidon. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, ancient commentaries on Aristophanes’ Peace say that she originally was a beautiful queen of Libya and loved by Zeus. His wife Hera, in her jealousy, robbed her of her children. Lamia went mad and became a child-eating daemon. She was often represented with a woman's face and a serpent's tail. Athenian mothers used her as a threat to frighten naughty children. In later times, Lamiae were conceived as handsome ghostly women attracting young men in order to enjoy their fresh, youthful, and pure flesh and blood, similar to vampires today.

John Keats published the narrative poem Lamia in 1819, based on a short anecdote in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe retells the story in his poem Die Braut von Korinth (1797, in German).

The English Classicist painter Herbert James Draper (1863-1920), who focused mainly on mythological themes from ancient Greece, painted The Lamia in 1909. Lamia, girded in a snake skin and gazing maliciously, holds a small snake on the back of her hand.

On the album 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway' released by Genesis in 1974, the song 'The Lamia' describes the encounter of the story's hero Rael with three snakelike figures in a water-filled pool.